There's a mess because of etymology versus politics. For a long time many people have called themselves liberal with a different set of dominant meanings than today. Politically, ideologically, academically and institutionally approaching the turn of the century as the left sought to redefine itself under the concept of using the new millennium to orchestrate a renewal of sorts the meaning of liberal was reformed or rather deformed along with it. This change was in an effect a reversal.
As a result when you have people today who are carrying the liberal torch yet being strict (authoritarian) and while still calling themselves liberal it makes it very difficult to continue using the label.
A lot of people have started calling themselves classical liberals as a result. While the left wing party in the UK explicitly renamed themselves New Labour ideologically despite the radical changes no one bothered to rename it. Neo-liberal was already taken so then simply never bothered. The old name isn't appropriate either but because they claim it you can't do anything. You can control what you call things and yourself but not others. The name is now like Little John.
Because the left is authoritarian but liberal isn't appropriate loads of people just call themselves libertarians instead merely to identify themselves as anti-authoritarian with less syllables.
It's still messy because there's also an established libertarian political concept with far more specifics which often isn't what many people intend to mean when they say libertarian.
English is an ongoing battle for the shortest terms to efficiently describe something ideally using familiar rather than invented terms or random terms.
There's a mess because of etymology versus politics. For a long time many people have called themselves liberal with a different set of dominant meanings than today. Politically, ideologically, academically and institutionally approaching the turn of the century as the left sought to redefine itself under the concept of using the new millennium to orchestrate a renewal of sorts the meaning of liberal was reformed or rather deformed along with it. This change was in an effect a reversal.
As a result when you have people today who are carrying the liberal torch yet being strict (authoritarian) and while still calling themselves liberal it makes it very difficult to continue using the label.
A lot of people have started calling themselves classical liberals as a result. While the left wing party in the UK explicitly renamed themselves New Labour ideologically despite the radical changes no one bothered to rename it. Neo-liberal was already taken so then simply never bothered. The old name isn't appropriate either but because they claim it you can't do anything. You can control what you call things and yourself but not others. The name is now like Little John.
Because the left is authoritarian but liberal isn't appropriate loads of people just call themselves libertarians instead merely to identify themselves as anti-authoritarian with less syllables.
It's still messy because there's also an established libertarian political concept with far more specifics which often isn't what many people intend to mean when they say libertarian.
English is an ongoing battle for the shortest terms to efficiently describe something ideally using familiar rather than invented terms or random terms.